My 50th Birthday!

I just turned 50, as in yesterday was my birthday. Like most folks who turn fifty, I’m left scratching my head with a slight puzzled look on my face thinking, “Half a century, huh?” I’m not freaked out about it. I’m not feeling too old, But there is something very rounded, almost symmetrical about being 50 years old. After all it’s halfway to 100. Oh, if I live that long. Whatever it is, reaching this age is a milestone like so many of the ages that end in a “0”. You hit 10, and you’re into double digits. You’re a big kid. You hit 20, and you’re more of an adult than you were at 18, but not quite as much of one as you are at 21. Then there’s 30, and you don’t feel so young and hip as you once did. At 40, you can really say that you’re middle aged. Then there’s 50, and by most estimations, it’s over the hill, that is if you don’t live to be more than 100. But for the majority of us, when we reach 50, we have more years behind us then in front of us. 50 may be just be barely over the hill, but we’ve definitely crested it. And it’s downhill from here.

For such a monumental occasion, I wanted to celebrate. When I turned 40, we had a big party and invited a bunch of friends to our house. It was a great evening of food, friends, music, and conversation. For 50, I wanted to have something a bit more low key—something more just for me. At first, I thought about having a guys weekend with some good buddies like we did last year when a close friend turned 50, but when you’re birthday is only three days before Christmas, there are already so many plans and commitments. I decided instead, on a solo getaway, and I couldn’t think of a better place to be than a cabin in the woods. Unfortunately, I don’t have an uncle or other relative that just happens to have a cabin in the woods, so I settled for one of the state parks here in Virginia. Most of Virginia’s state parks have cabins that you can rent, often near a lake, and I looked for parks that offered small cabins along with good hiking trails. I discovered that a few of the parks had small, efficiency cabins—a perfect size and cost for me. Only one park, Fairy Stone State Park had an efficiency cabin available for the time I wanted to go. This past week, I found myself up in southern Virginia by a lake staying in a log cabin at Fairy Stone State Park that was built back in the 1930s or 40s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

I had a great time. I decided to approach it like solo retreat and kept to a flexible schedule, so I was up at 6am each morning, had breakfast, and then spent about 20 minutes meditating. Then by 8am I was out for a hike. Each day was a different hike anywhere from one to two and half hours. Then it was back to the cabin to make my daily collage and do some visual journaling. Lunch was at noon, and then it was back out for smaller afternoon hike around an hour long. Except for the day, I had to run to the grocery store to get a few things that I hadn’t even thought about needing when I packed, but I still managed to get in the bike after running my Errand. After my afternoon hike, I read and napped. Then it was some journaling and making art in the afternoon. Around 5pm, I started dinner, at least those two nights when I actually cooked. My last evening was a dinner of leftovers. By the time I had eaten and done the dishes, it was around 7pm and I hunkered down for an evening journaling session. Then some time to relax and read before going to bed. It was good to have a rhythm to the day that had some active parts, some artmaking parts, and some parts for rest.

No tv, no internet, no streaming videos, no social media. It’s amazing how disconnecting from all of that can be such a creative boost. But, I didn’t set out with any productivity goals in mind. I wasn’t going to write the great American novel or paint 50 masterpieces. I just wanted time to myself and for myself to make, move, read, and rest. It was glorious to give myself such a gift. It was a wonderful experience, and it helped me clarify some very important things and decide on some new directions for things to come. I’m already thinking about how my experience might translate into a retreat type of thing in the future for others to reconnect with themselves.

I was sad that last morning as I packed up. Though I couldn’t wait to get home and see my wife and my animals and to sleep in my own bed, I had a longing to stay for a few more days. There was just something about being in that small cabin with a blazing fire in the fireplace each night and reconnecting with myself. I can’t recommend the experience enough, and I encourage everyone to find the time and the place to go in solitude and spend time with themselves and for themselves.

I can’t wait to do it again, and I’d definitely go back to Fairy Stone.

I hope that the ending of one year and the beginning of another will bring you time to reconnect with yourself, your friends, and your family. I wish you a bright New Year!

Fairy stones that I found my last morning. These curious, geometrical stones give the park it’s name!

Rick Rubin and The Creative Act

I just finished reading Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act. If you’re not familiar with Rubin, you are most likely familiar with his work. He is a music producer who founded Def Jam Recordings back in the 80’s and has worked with a wide variety of legendary musicians and artists throughout his career, like the Beastie Boys, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Johnny Cash, and many more. So, Rubin definitely knows a thing or two about creativity, but to be honest not much from the book really stands out for me.

Maybe it’s because I’ve read, studied, and thought a lot about creativity, but nothing in the book really hit me as earth shattering and ground breaking. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a well written book, and there’s a lot of good stuff in the book with a lot of practical advice. It’s just more of a collection of reflections and essays on creativity than a cohesive statement on creativity, and maybe that’s why nothing is really jumping out at me.

The one thing that did stand out is the way Rubin ties together the mystical and the practical. Like a lot of creators, Rubin describes creativity in very mystical and mythical ways, but then goes on to give very practical advice like showing up everyday. But the more and more that I delve into the creativity, the more I am convinced that it is much more practical than mystical.

A lot of artists, writers, and musicians use flowery and ethereal language to describe creativity, and it can definitely feel that way, especially since a lot of creative insight can seem like it comes out of no where. But I wonder if that flash of insight that seems to hit like lightning is just how the human mind is wired. We take in all of these stimuli—sights, sounds, ideas, and so much more—and our minds are just constantly sifting through all of this data and making connections, even when we’re not conscious of it. Then seemingly out of nowhere we’re hit with an idea—often when we’re mowing the yard or walking the dog or washing the dishes. But is it some divine flash of insight? Is it the Muse whispering in our ear? Or is it just our brains making sense of all of this stuff that we’ve taken in? Are we simply priming our brains when we work and make and create and getting it ready to have those insights?

I don’t have the answers, but I do believe that there are definitely practical things that we can do to tap into our creativity more often. If we sit around waiting for those creative insights to strike like lightning, then we end up sitting around and waiting a lot. If we’re making and doing and thinking, those insights are going to hit more frequently because we’re constantly priming ourselves with ideas.

What practical things do you do to tap into your creativity?

We Are All Uniquely Creative

Picasso famously said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

With all of my years working with young children, I definitely believe it. Children are bubbling over with creativity and curiosity. They sing and dance, draw and tell stories. The pretend and imagine, ask questions and seek to understand. It’s why I believe that everyone is uniquely creative. The creativity and curiosity that we had as children doesn’t just dry up and disappear. We may have closed ourselves off from it as we grew older and conformity and fitting in became greater and greater concerns. We may simply not see how we are creative believing that we’re not creative geniuses or that we’re not artsy or musical or literary.

However, we are creative in many practical ways in our lives, and we are always making creative decisions whether we see them as creative or not. Creativity isn’t only for special people or only for certain types of people doing certain activities. We are all creative. We have only lost sight of it. We have to open ourselves once again to our creativity and try seeing the world like we did as children and fill ourselves with wonder and curiosity.

We create our world through our choices. So, what kind of world are we creating for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for our fellow humans?

Consistency

As a kid, I loved to draw, and I drew all of the time. However, as I got older, especially when I got into high school and college, it seemed like I had to be in the mood to draw and to make art or I had to be deeply inspired. I would sit down to draw, and if I wasn’t “feeling it,” I just gave up and waited for a day when I was “feeling it.” That just meant that I made art infrequently. It was just so sporadic waiting around to feel inspired and in the mood.

Now that those days are long behind me, and I’ve spent many years making art and teaching art, I find that making art and being creative is really about consistency. When we consistently show up to our art, we improve our skills and our craft, but we also don’t need to wait around for inspiration to strike. Consistently showing up and getting to work makes it so much easier to get into our art because we’re not waiting around for the muse to sit on our shoulder and whisper in our ear.

It’s amazing how ideas flow when we just engage with our making repeatedly and consistently. When we get our hands moving and making over and over again, ideas just seem to spark. It helps if we have easy ways to engage with our art, and easy ways to get started. When we try to envision a big, complex project, we can be easily daunted by the scope and the complexity. But if we can find a way to sit down and make for 15, 20, or 30 minutes a day, it’s incredible what that time adds up to.

I’ve been engaging in daily artmaking for probably two years now, and I sit down every morning for 30 minutes to an hour and make something. Here lately it’s been daily collages, and even if I can only find 5 minutes, I find a way to make something. It has added up over all of that time, and it has become a habit. It feels strange when I haven’t had time to make my daily art. There are just some days that are super busy where I need to me up and going early in the morning, and I don’t have a chance for my daily making. On days like that, I usually find myself working for 5 or 10 minutes right before bed. Making something so quickly forces me to work quickly and intuitively, and often, it’s these quick 5 or 10 minute works that seem to open up new directions and new ideas.

It’s amazing what can happen when you show up everyday and make something.

How are you showing up consistently for your art? And if you’re not, how can you start?

I am. . .

I am a teacher at heart, and it’s teaching and sharing my art with others that really gives me purpose. Whether I’m in a classroom with students or making a video for YouTube, it’s my desire to help others connect with their creativity that energizes me and motivates me.

Yes, I’m also an artist. I live and breathe art, and I sit down everyday and engage in my artmaking. But I don’t pursue all those things that artists have to do to get their art out there and make a name for themselves. I don’t go to art openings and make connections with curators and gallery owners in order to get exhibitions, and the few exhibitions that I’ve had over the years have been because of someone else working on my behalf. I’m terrible at promoting and selling my art, especially online, and even when I’m fortunate to sell something, I cringe at having to pack up the art and head over to the post office to send it off. I sell most of my work in person at conferences and workshops where people often know who I am and what I do, and want to take a small piece of mine home with them.

I love making the work, and I think that my work is good. I’d love if I could sell more of it, but I’m just not into pursuing all of that other stuff. It just does’t interest me.

But I love sharing my work and how I make it. I love helping others discover their artistic voice, and I love being a small inspiration for others.

I believe that art can can have a huge impact on the world, but I believe that helping individuals uncover their creative voice can have an even bigger impact. I don’t think my art will ever change the world, but I believe my teaching will.

The Power of Creativity

We are all uniquely creative.

I’ve been making art for more than four decades and teaching art for nearly three, and I’ve become very passionate about creativity, and I am very interested in helping others tap into their creativity. Unfortunately, many folks simply believe that they are not creative and the world is divided into creatives and non-creatives, with the latter group making up the larger percentage of the population since creativity is reserved for only “special” people.

I can’t help thinking of my own journey. Creativity wasn’t ever really mentioned or talked about—not in my art classes in middle and high school—not in my drawing, painting, sculpture, or design classes in college—not in my art education classes as I learned about teaching art. Creativity was just taken for granted, and either you had it or you didn’t. When I heard artists, musicians, and film makers talk about creativity, it was always this very aloof thing. It was magical and mystical, and they talked of the muse landing on their shoulder and whispering inspiration into their ears. Or they talked of divine inspiration coming down from heaven above.

Creativity was never presented as a practical thing, and only special people could tap into its ethereal magic.

But what if I said that creativity is practical, that you didn’t have to be special, and in fact, that each and everyone of us is creative. We have just lost touch with it, but each one of us is a fountain of amazing creativity. Most of us have just been turned off from it, but it’s there inside of us. We just have to tap into it.

How do I know this? How do I know that everyone is creative?

Let’s look at children. If you have children, teach children, know children, or have any experience with children, especially around the ages of five and six, you know how they are bubbling over with curiosity and energy. They draw with fearlessness. They break out into song and dance at any moment. They build and they play. They are little, creative machines. One study has found that 98% of five year olds score at the creative genius level, while the same study found that only 2% of adults do.

What happens to us as we grow up and grow older?

How do all of these astonishingly creative little people grow up to people who only see themselves as utterly uncreative? We were all immensely creative as young kids, full of inquisitive tenacity, and we were fearless with our creative energies. Along the way, though, we’ve reigned it in, pulled it back, and denied it. The majority of us go about our daily lives believing that we are in no way creative. We’re not like da Vinci, Beethoven, Einstein, or Madame Curie. We won’t make any major breakthroughs or create masterpieces that will live on for hundreds of years. But really, who will? It doesn’t mean that we’re not creative because we’ll never be creative geniuses that are remembered throughout history. But we are all uniquely creative.

I want to tell you a story—a true story about growing up in a rural area just south of Pittsburgh. I didn’t grow up in what most people would describe as a creative family. I wasn’t surrounded by musicians and artists. My dad worked in a feed mill and later became a truck driver, and my mom worked in the bakery department of a grocery store. I grew up playing baseball and football and roaming the acres of woods that surrounded our house. But I also grew up drawing. I loved to draw. I didn’t have artists in the family to look up to, but I had my parents.

Looking back, I see now that it was a remarkably creative environment. We were poor, and when you’re poor, you have to be creative by necessity. We couldn’t always afford new stuff, and one of my earliest memories was making Christmas decorations with my mom. She had a stack of construction paper, and showed my sister, my brother, and me how to make paper chains, snowmen, Santa Clauses, and Christmas trees. She didn’t have a how-to book, and this was back in the dark ages before the Internet and YouTube. She figured it all out on her own so that we would have Christmas decorations that year.

I remember my dad fixing everything in the house. The dryer would stop drying clothes, and my dad would take it apart, figure out what was wrong, get the correct part and fix it. The car didn’t pass inspection because of bad brakes or big rusty holes in the fender, my dad would figure out how to put new brakes on, or how to patch up the holes in the fender with some sheet metal, a pop rivet gun, and some Bondo. He just figured it out.

This is what I saw all the time growing up, as my parents figured out creative ways to solve problems and fix things because we were poor and couldn’t always afford new things or to get things repaired professionally. Even though, my parents never considered themselves creative, and they were only doing what they had to do, they consistently used their creativity, and that was my environment growing up.

Imagine if we all could recognize how we use our creativity in practical, everyday ways. Imagine if creativity wasn’t such a mystical and mysterious thing, and we didn’t have to wait around for the muse or for divinity, and we could just tap into our creativity whenever we wanted. Image if we could harness that creative exuberance that we all had as kids, and use that power as adults.

How would our world be different?

But here’s the thing. We can. We can tap into our creativity. We can use that power of childhood creative curiosity as adults. We don’t have to wait around for the muse to land on our shoulder or listen for a divine voice on the wind. We are all uniquely creative, and we can impact this world in extraordinary ways when we accept and embrace our creativity.

We just have to consistently show up and get work.